Status Quo
A central laboratory animal facility of the Medical Faculty Bochum takes care of the procurement, keeping, breeding and veterinary care of the animals used. In the sense of refinement, researchers are advised in detail by the animal welfare officer of the RUB in the planning of animal experimental research projects. An extensive range of training courses in laboratory animal science as well as the acquisition of certificates for courses of EU function A and EU function B serve the researchers as a training and further education offer. Continuous individual training offers for researchers train the better handling of laboratory animals. The use of conditionally genetically modified mouse models helps to reduce stress.
The aspect of replacement is presented through the use of cellular models such as humanized cell lines, stem cells, experiments on isolated organs and organoids, study of living human tissues in chicken egg chorionallantoic membrane models, and conditionally immortalized stem cells from gene-deficient mice.
The current development of human biomaterial databases will help to reduce animal experiments in the future or make them completely avoidable. Another current focus at the Bochum site is interfaculty organoid research as a substitute method for animal experiments in physiological, immunological, neurological, cancer therapy or human genetics.
By using MRI and in vivo luminescence or fluorescence scanners for non-invasive analysis methods, animal experiments can be reduced. Improved analytical methods can generate valid data sets from even small amounts of cell and tissue samples to answer scientific questions. Sharing organs from a sacrificed laboratory animal among different working groups is already common practice at the site.
Objective / Focus
In the future, it is planned to merge the ZVM with the decentralized animal facilities of the other faculties (biochemistry, biology, psychology). This should create and strengthen new synergies. An improvement of the spatial possibilities offer also at the same time an improvement of the technical conditions, from which also improvements in the refinement can be derived. The coordinated procurement, breeding, husbandry as well as the joint use of animal models will result in a relative reduction of animal numbers against the background of an overall increased demand for (patho)physiological and translationally relevant animal experimental research.
The joint use of rooms for behavioral experiments also creates new synergies. The establishment of a 3R professorship, which is embedded in the focal topics of the Medical Faculty of Bochum, as part of the network, will contribute to improvements in the 3R field. The establishment of continuous measurement methods such as telemetry or advice on the generation of genetically modified animal models and their production are techniques that the Bochum site could contribute to the network. The cryopreservation of non-acutely used mouse lines is currently being further expanded.